Question:
"The English, they say, is the easiest language to learn, but it is the
hardest to perfect."
About this sentence, my question concerns "they say". Does this sentence
means:
(1) "They say [the English is the easiest language to learn, but it is the
hardest to perfect.]" or
(2) "They say [the English is the easiest language to learn,] but it is the
hardest to perfect."
In the latter case, the second sentence is not what they say but just a
statement. Which I find a little bit funny logically. So, I reckon that the
first is the right understanding.
I also wonder what if the sentence goes like:
(3) "They say the English is the easiest language to learn but is the
hardest to perfect." and
(4) "They say the English is the easiest language to learn but it is the to
perfect." (please note both do not have a "comma" before the word "but")
Answer:
First, there's a mistake in the sentence. The first word "the" should not be
there: it should begin: "English, they say..."
It's not easy to say, because the sentence is a little ambiguous. The second
meaning is perfectly okay, though; it would mean this:
They say, "English is the easiest language to learn," but I say, "It is the
hardest to perfect."
The way the sentence is written, I would normally understand the second
meaning. If the first meaning was intended, it would be more natural to
phrase it like this:
English, they say, is the easiest language to learn, but the hardest to
perfect.
But it doesn't *have* to be phrased that way, it would just be more natural.
All I can say is that it is more *likely* to be the second meaning, but it
*could* be the first. (When you have a sentence like this, where you can't
tell which meaning is intended, that usually means the sentence is badly
constructed: grammatically correct maybe, but badly constructed.)
Except for the "the" which shouldn't be there, that would be perfectly good.
It's similar to the sentence I wrote earlier and there's no doubt that it
has the *first* meaning.
There's a word missing between "it is the" and "to perfect", so the sentence
is incomplete and grammatically incorrect. It's exactly the same as your
sentence (3) except for that one missing word. It is the ??? to perfect? The
hardest? The easiest? The funniest? The most fun? The most disappointing?
The most boring?
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